TIL Ocado is supposed to be an automation/robotics co.
I associate it more with delivery vans that seem to be in no particular hurry (unlike uber eats / DPD / UPS etc)
Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
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Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#12Here in the Houston areas, supermarkets like Kroger/Walmart/HEB/etc always have single floor buildings. Why can't they build multi-floor buildings for storage upstairs and retail walk-in sales on the ground floor? On the above ground floors, they can create an automated or semi-automated system for employees to gather up items for online/delivery orders.
Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#13Here in the Houston areas, supermarkets like Kroger/Walmart/HEB/etc always have single floor buildings. Why can't they build multi-floor buildings for storage upstairs and retail walk-in sales on the ground floor? On the above ground floors, they can create an automated or semi-automated system for employees to gather up items for online/delivery orders.
I would guess that having everything on one floor optimizes the unloading, restocking and logistics. Also construction is cheaper.
Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#143 CFCs (robotics centers) closed, 5 continuing operating [1]. Initial commitment was 20 & Kroger is paying 350m$ to compensate the partner.
I don't know what success looks like but it's probably fair to say they were over-extended by roughly 30-40%.
https://chainstoreage.com/kroger-pay-350-million-automation-...
Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#15this kind of stuff is still probably a few orders of magnitude too expensive per unit cost.
I'm also skeptical it'll ever work in America due to the general lack of density.
Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#16Good news for blue collar workers, tough for investors. The bean-counting dream of LLM's and Robotics remains, but until ChatGPT is placing your order at Mcdonalds drive-thrus and Amazon is laying off warehouse associates en masse, i'd say that last 5% is still taking 95% of the time.
McDonald’s is an interesting example because they’re increasingly replacing cashiers with kiosks. Robotics/LLMs seem to have diminishing returns compared to that in the order taking realm.
Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#17Sounds like they just put them in the wrong places. > Fenyo added that Kroger’s decision to locate the Ocado centers outside of cities turned out to be a key flaw. > “Ultimately those were hard places to make this model work,” said Fenyo. “You didn’t have enough people ordering, and you had a fair amount of distance to drive to get the orders to them. And so ultimately, these large centers were just not processing en…
But I think in the cities Kroger grocery stores serve as the fulfilment centers, so they don't need robotic ones.
There's probably still room for automation, but it might have to be different than warehouse automation.
Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#18Notable that the reasons for failure to meet benchmarks was that the locations were too far away, and that they are moving to the “Micro-Fulfillment Center” approach that Amazon is doing at Whole Foods. This is exactly what everyone predicted when Amazon bought WF - turn it into a grocery FC. That makes sense to me. Feels like we’re going to have warehouse scale vending machines in cities, and delivery bots taking th…
I like being able to see the thing I'm going to get and holding it in my hand.
The grocery industry relentlessly optimizes for implicit choices over expressed preferences. Nobody is asking for misters, colored lighting, skeumorphic veggie bins, and wide open sightlines in the produce aisle. Stores do it because customers buy more when they do. The same thing will happen to in-store shopping if consumer preferences swing ever swing that way instead.
Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#19Here in the Houston areas, supermarkets like Kroger/Walmart/HEB/etc always have single floor buildings. Why can't they build multi-floor buildings for storage upstairs and retail walk-in sales on the ground floor? On the above ground floors, they can create an automated or semi-automated system for employees to gather up items for online/delivery orders.
Good construction is not cheap and takes many quarters. Land outside the urban area is far too cheap and probably subsidized (directly or with free oversized infrastructure) because local government always wants jobs, even small numbers of shitty jobs.
Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
#20I sometime use Ocado in the UK, and it's 'OK' but it's certainly not at the cheap end of the market.
I more often use a traditional supermarkets home delivery service where it's manually picked; those supermarkets have the advantage of having very little infrastructure overhead in the picking - they mostly use their existing stores and pick at quiet times/over night. Ocado has to run entire warehouses just for this task.
Ocado can only work with packed goods - not weighed vegetables for example - which the hand pickers in store can do, albeit whether they do it well is down to luck and the mood of the picker.